


Who's Laughing Now?

by Random_ag



Series: Sides of an Inky Coin [2]
Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Rebirth, Sacrifice, So yeah, Two Minds One Body, this is a followup to Great Minds Shouldn't Be That Close
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 14:54:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14896656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random_ag/pseuds/Random_ag
Summary: Was it Boris, or him? Who was finding what funny?He couldn't know, and it was driving him mad.





	Who's Laughing Now?

**Author's Note:**

> Please read Great Minds Shouldn't Be That Close before, for this is a followup

Amazing. Utterly amazing.

He’d barely expected this, after so many failures, but… there it was!

A perfect Boris, laying on the floor in a fetal position, freshly spat out of the Ink Machine. He looked so innocent, a child almost.

 _His_  child, Joey thought as a smile widened on his face.

Finally, after more or less terrible mistakes, he’d managed to create a perfect, living, breathing cartoon. Sure, he might have had to kill in order to reach such an outstanding goal, but truly, who could blame him?

Who, with the power to bring life to ink-drawn creatures, would have wasted such an opportunity? Who would have allowed such potential to be discarded only because it asked for a little sacrifice?

The answer was, nobody.

And Joey Drew was certainly not nobody.

A suffering moan caught him, breaking the bubble of contentment he’d been floating in.

A thing - ribs poked slightly through the skin, round eyes glowed yellow, the lower body melted in a mix of contorted bones and pants - raised itself from the ground and moved towards the unaware wolf, hand stretched out to grab him.

Joey’s disgust turned into rage. In a second, he reached his axe, always useful in case problematic hellspawns crawled out of the Machine.

How  _dared_  it! Trying to even brush its ink dripping fingertips on the most perfect of his creations!

He swung down the weapon, and the mouthless creature cried in pain. First the arm, the the head, then the torso, until it was but the same liquid from which it was given birth.

Boris flinched, not awake, but soon to be. He had to get him to safety.

As he dragged the poor anthropomorphic animal away, Joey simply couldn’t understand. Never had it happened before, that with a close to perfect result had also come an utter failure.

Maybe the Machine had acted up a bit. Maybe the ritual had been a little off.

He soon stopped questioning, and forgot all about it.

Or.

Maybe.

It was because Wally hadn’t been sacrificed alone.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

It was unbearable.

Absolutely unbearable.

Sammy couldn’t think. And when he tried to, his whole body ached so hard he couldn’t stand it.

But he had to think. He had to figure it out, figure something out.

Who was he? Sammy, yes, that much he knew.

What was he? The pain rose, but he tried to go on. He didn’t know, it just hurt.

What did he need? He felt aflame, yet kept thinking. His lighter side, his heart.

Heart, heart, heart, where could he get his heart?

The animal!

His head burst into black drops and he fell to the ground. A moment, and the ink began reshaping on his neck.

The animal. Yes, it was the answer, the animal had all he needed, if he got the animal he would have had  ~~Wally~~  his heart back, he would have been  ~~not alone~~   ~~with someone~~   ~~whole~~  stable again.

His body hurt as he strapped the wolf to the table, his eyes twitched while he opened its chest  _(he felt them slipping down his face as if melting in sadness. He stopped before breaking the animal apart, unsure. He didn’t want to do that, he didn’t know why. But he had to be whole again)_ , his hands shook as he grabbed the heart and pulled, pulled, pulled it away from the ribs.

The animal fell dead, and the heart was sucked in his black, liquid body.

He felt something, confusion, vague memories, then better and then… fine.

He was fine.

There were voices inside his head that screamed and cried, but he was used to not having his mind all for himself. How was he used to it, why was he used to it? He didn’t know.

He looked at the animal, and his eyes really did melt this time.

They fell down his face in golden streams and he couldn’t stop looking at what he had done, why was he feeling so bad, why was he feeling as if he’d killed someone dear to him?

Boris’s mouth fell open, suddenly, and he looked that way dogs look when they stick out their tongue and stretch they corners of their lips all the way back to the start of the rows of their teeth. He looked like he was smiling, enjoying himself.

He looked like he was laughing.

Sammy laughed too. He laughed between tears, and he didn’t know why he was doing it, but he felt like it was right to do, like he should have done it too since the wolf was doing it. The laughter was supposed to come from their mouths at the same time, even if he didn’t want to laugh at all, wasn’t it?

But he couldn’t pin down that atrocious feeling - who was the one laughing really? Was it Boris, or him? Who was finding what funny?

He couldn’t know, and it was driving him mad.

He curled in a ball in front of the corpse, and looked at it with melting eyes and sobbing laughter, praying for it to tell him, to answer him.

Who’s laughing now? Me or you?

He got no answer.

He wrote the first question on the wall. Wall, it sounded similar to something familiar, very close, very close to him, to his heart.

Wall, wall, wall, wall, wall, wall, wall, wall, wall, wall, wall, the wolf, wall, the wolf, wall, the wolf, wall, Boris, Wall, Boris, Wall, Boris, Wall, what was it?  _What was it? **What wAS IT?**_

He left the room running and hid in the floor below.

He couldn’t bear that sight anymore.

He tried, he tried to do anything to wash it away from him, he prayed to his Saviour, he sang and made music, he offered sacrifices, he wore the mask.

But he couldn’t stop thinking of that laughter, that laughter that belonged to no one, not to him, not to the wolf, and that haunted him terribly every single second like the ghost of fratricide.

Who’s laughing now? Me or you?

He didn’t know, he couldn’t know.

All he knew is that he wasn’t whole, and it was driving him mad.


End file.
